


Smile, Child

by 00qverlord



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/F, Gay, I was told it was good, LGBTQ Character, LGBTQ Female Character of Color, M/M, Pansexual Character, Transgender, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000, for a project, purple hair dye, really vague but kinda good i guess, wordcount is 2040
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-01
Packaged: 2018-06-05 18:26:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6716191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/00qverlord/pseuds/00qverlord
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Mazee grew up, so Lance tries to smile as much as possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Smile, Child

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this for a book my group is creating, and I had some people read it, and they told me it was good, (I really hope it is, friends can be biased) anyway I hope you enjoy. We had to pick a quote and write a story about it, so this is mine. The quote is "Let your smile change the world, but don't let the world change your smile."

Mazee was 6 years old and her smile was brighter than any light in any room. She flew around the backyard, laughing as her father chased her with open arms. He was faster than she was, but he let her run anyway. He didn't really know why, maybe he wanted his baby girl to be young for a while longer. She went to school with pigtails, and when her mom came to pick her up, it was in a bun. One of her friend's mom had taught her friend to do it, and did it to all the girls in the class. Mazee didn't like the slide at the park, because she often saw bees crawling in and out of the blue pole overhead, but that didn't stop her and her friends from having competitions on the monkey bars.

Mazee was 9 years old now, and was pressured into a relationship by her classmates. She didn't like that they forced her to, but he was a nice enough boy. Jason was his name, and if it was voluntary, Mazee might have actually started something with him. Her mom said she was too young to be dating, but she didn't really care. Everyone else was talking about things like that so why shouldn't she? Her mom didn't have to know, and her father was an endless record of "go ask your mom". They 'broke up' after a couple of days, because neither of them really wanted to be together, and Jason had confided in Mazee that he had a crush on another male classmate. They both agreed, Mikey was a little cute. Mazee's smile shone as bright as the sun, and she was happy he told her. They swore to always be friends and support each other as long as they lived.

When Mazee turned 10, she got her hair cut real short, against the wishes of her parents. It was her birthday, and she claimed it was bothering her and getting in her eyes, but deep down she knew it was something else. She just couldn't dig enough to find out what. She liked to hang out with the guys and play baseball in the local park more than have sleepovers and nail painting with the other girls. She was the last to know gossip in the grade, and she didn't really care. Mazee didn't like the girls who poked their noses in other people's business anyway. One of the boys who played baseball, Jem, one of his friends came along, and both Mazee and Jason blushed every time he spoke to them. He thought they were kind of weird, and they kind of agreed. But as they agreed, Mazee grinned as bright as the beautiful day.

When Mazee was 12, her breasts started growing. She ran to her mum when one starts hurting, and she sat Mazee down and explained what was going on. This only served to sooth some of her nerves, and proved to aggravate others. It's alright, she wasn't dying and didn't have any fatal diseases. But she didn't want a big chest. Consciously, she knew this was stupid, every girl went through this kind of process. Like there was some switch in her mind that says 'yes, I'm going to make you go through all of this suffering you didn't want to.' Jason had laughed at her when she told him about it, but after realizing she was serious, they actually had a good talk. Mazee felt better afterwards. And with Jason she laughed and smiled.

At 13 years old, Mazee didn't really want to be called Mazee anymore. Everyone but the teachers at school called her Maze. Maze thought it suited her more, it wasn't male but it wasn't all female either. Maze appreciated the freedom. She met a girl called Sam at the library, when they reached for the same book on accident. Sam had bright purple highlights in her hair that Maze was jealous of. She was proud of herself when she introduced herself as Maze. It was different from asking people to call her one thing, from those that already knew her. Sam didn't have to know she wasn't really called Maze. She gave Sam her phone number and they continued to see each other, planned or not. The first time she took Jason to meet Sam, they got on surprisingly well. She was happy she didn't have to deal with the drama of the two closest people to her being enemies. She had read somewhere that having 3 friends was the perfect amount. She didn't really believe it, but she thought she was beginning to see how they would think that. A couple weeks after new years, Jason broke his arm playing hockey. Both Sam and Maze had been there to see him get slammed into the boards by the opposing team's largest player. The whole arena seemed to still with bated breath, and fear when Jason didn't get up immediately. He was fine, in the end. There was nothing wrong with his head, but he wouldn't play for the rest of the season. He could be back for playoffs, but it was risky and just not worth it as his team was at the bottom of the league, again. The teacher gave him printed notes so he didn't have to write them down with the hand he wasn't good at using. The whole class was jealous, but Maze understood. She smiled and told him it was OK, that he shouldn't feel bad because they didn't get the same arrangement as he did.

During the summer, near Maze's 14th birthday, she was scrolling through her social media account and found a post:  
"What would be the first thing you would do if you woke up as the opposite gender?"  
There was a part of her that said she would run around telling everyone that her name was Lance, because she had read the story of King Arthur and had forever loved the name. The more plausible part of her mind reasoned that she should probably be freaking out, but it didn't seem to come to her. If she woke up the opposite gender, she would be excited! A smile wormed it's way through a cloudy day at all the possibilities this post had just opened to Maze's imagination. She thought about inventing a machine that could change your gender. She thought about being the first to try it out. She knew this wasn't rational, that you can't biologically change your gender, but that didn't stop her from wondering. She told Jason about what she had discovered, and he had told her "that would be pretty neat."

Maze was 16 when she found out what transgender was. She was reading a story, and someone was described as transgender, so she went to look up the definition.  
"Denoting or relating to a person whose self-identity does not conform unambiguously to conventional notions of male or female gender." She looked around the links some more, and there were other people who described what it felt like, what was going on, and Maze started crying. They weren't tears of sadness, they were tears of joy and relief because this is exactly what was going on. She found out what you can do to help yourself, what others can do to help you, and it gave a name to the unknown, a light in her darkness, a smile opposing her frown. Because others said it was weird to change your name out of the blue, but Maze could be the Lance she always wanted to. It was hard, and it was only going to get harder, Maze recognized that. It was a weekend when she texted Jason and Sam to meet her at the local convenience store around the block. No one else was there, they bought candy bars and took them to the old playground at their elementary school. They had a good time, talking about everything and nothing, at the same time. But there was always that 10 ton elephant sitting on her chest. She pushed it until she couldn't anymore and she caved. She told them she wanted to be called Lance. She wanted to go by He pronouns and she wanted them to forget her as Maze. They all agreed it wouldn't be easy, but they were all willing to try. It would take a lot of mental effort to stop calling herself by she and Maze, but she was determined to put out a smile, even if she didn't mean it.

Lance was 17 when he met someone he thought he loved. Her name was Kat, and she was nice. Sam had set them up when she noticed they had been making heart-eyes at each other for quite some time. She had known him all through school, and didn't care that he was born a she. They had everything that couples would be jealous of. Trust, attraction, and a willingness to keep it going. At first they did. But at the 4 month mark, when they had gotten as far as holding hands in public and kisses on the cheek, Lance started to feel slightly nauseous whenever he went to see her. He stirred in his thoughts, asked Jason and Sam for advice, when he finally had the answer he was looking for.  
He broke it off after another week, regretted it a lot, and they decided that they should remain friends. Besides, she was interested in another girl anyway, and Lance had things on his mind, like hospital visits and final exams coming up.

Lance was 21 when he legally changed his name. There was a lot of forms to fill out, and there was a lot of waiting and uncertainty in whether he would ever get a response. When he finally got the form that asked him what he would like to be called now, he wrote in the neatest printing he could muster, Lance Parker Dean Calloway. He picked Parker as his middle name, because it is what is mom would have called him if he was born a boy. He got a new passport along with it, and he started off on his trip around the world with Jason and Sam. In England, he met a man called Kieran. When Lance bumped into him in the bus terminal, they ended up staying for a few extra days. Kieran did end up coming with them, and since they weren't flying, it wasn't a problem. The four of them continued their journey together. Lance smiled the whole time, because everyone he loved was as happy as he was.

On Sam's 23 birthday, they arrived in India. A girl had met her in the shopping centre when Jason and Sam had gone out for food. Her name was Yumna, and she had slipped Sam her number at the cash register.  
At the place where they were staying, Kieran and Lance stayed behind. They shared their first kiss, but neither of the individual's first. It didn't matter, because the two of them felt like there was a 10 ton elephant that had gotten off their chests. Yumna came home with them after shift, and it was the happiest Lance had seen Sam ever. He smiled for them. They convinced Yumna and Kieran to come back to America with them. They did agree, because who better to spend your time with than with other misfits?

Lance was 22 when they arrived back in America, with 2 more than they started out with. They bought a house, a good enough size in the cheap part of town but they loved it like their own already. Lance set up a spare room for animation, music mixing for Jason and an art studio for Yumna. It was their favourite part of it. Kieran and Sam went to college, Sam for computer science and Kieran for directing and film. Jason met Alex at a production studio, a tall black man that Lance was kind of afraid of at first. Alex was actually a human sized teddy bear, and Jason was happy. Lance was 22 years old and his smile was brighter than any light in any room.


End file.
